A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028 • Hacker News Board

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#261

Post by Guidii » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

modo_mario wrote: post #248

flgb wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand you are trying to make a general argument, but those dynamics are definitely not true of Australia. Our state with the highest share of renewable energy, South Australia, has not seen gas use increase as renewables have replaced coal. The idea that 100% of all renewable capacity has to be ‘backed up’ with firm capacity is not true in general, and certainly not true in the specific case of Australia given…

>Our state with the highest share of renewable energy, South Australia, has not seen gas use increase as renewables have replaced coal. But there is still plenty of coal production no? Here Nuclear which is the vast majority of our production is being phased out due to political pressure. Our Greens push gas plants to cover the lowdays for renewables. Which variable production source is kept in mind in South Australi…

Yes, there is "still plenty of coal production" in Australia. Some references:

Coal accounts for about 75 per cent of Australia’s electricity generation, followed by gas (16 per cent), hydro (5 per cent) and wind around (2 per cent).[1]

About 92% of electricity in Ontario is produced from zero-carbon sources: 59% from nuclear, 24% from hydroelectricity, 8% from wind, and 1% from solar.

[1] https://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-topics/energy/overview#:~:t....

[2] https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca/en/data-analysis/energy-markets/pr....

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#262

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #133

clarionbell wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they need replacement components for any of this. Which they will need evry couple of years. Then they will need centralized infrastructure in form of manufacturing plants, roads, rail and finally (because it is imported from China most likely) ports. Every step producing greenhouse gasses or other pollution. Self sufficiency of this sort is largely a sub-urban myth. A comfortable, optimistic one, but a myth no…

Decades, IIRC, not years. Yes, total independence is unrealistic and will be until we have von Neumann universal constructors, but we are starting to get to the point where big footprint homes could reasonably be energy-independent for normal daily use.

Depends how you sliced it.

If every house had solar panels, there's going to be a rolling requirement for on going maintenance.

Let's say, for argument sake, solar panels and inverts are approximately as reliable and long lasting as air conditioners, we'll still need a whole new fairly large industry.

Seems doable, but we'd need to deal with recycling all the parts, still doable, but there's nothing self sufficient about any of that.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#263

Post by DennisP » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:28 PM UTC

dale_glass wrote: post #259

DennisP wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on how you set up your electricity market. Since these markets are necessarily designed from the top down, we can set the rules however we like.

You can, but why would you set up the market backwards? The whole idea of base load was that nuclear is very cheap, but inflexible. So you optimize, generating as much as possible with nuclear, then filling in the variable bits with more expensive to run, but more flexible generation. Cheap renewables have completely wrecked that model though.

You set up the market to get the lowest possible total energy cost. If the lowest system design is to have nuclear as part of the mix instead of massive amounts of storage, then there's nothing backwards about setting up the market to support that.

Right now we have a market where wind/solar don't have to pay for the externalities imposed by their intermittency. That is backwards.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#264

Post by pjc50 » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:32 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #167

BongoMcCat wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the economic argument is that it isn't viable for a private company to start a nuclear power-plant, it would require government involvement, and lots of people don't want the government to get involved in something that they think no-government entities can handle.

That's silly for electricity. Electricity will never, ever be a free market. The barriers to entry are almost insurmountable, especially capital requirements (production + distribution, especially distribution) but also the myriad safety regulations. Might as well involve the government and gain some accountability, because with corporations, there is 0 accountability.

One of those definitional things; it'll never be a truly unregulated wild west market, but then what is?

Realistically the grid needs to be nationalised or under an arms-length wholly government owned corporation. You can't have competing grids. The grid is the market. The UK tried privatizing it (and the rail infrastructure, and the broadband infrastructure) and ended up taking electricity and rail national again.

On the back end I think the UK market works reasonably well with a light regulatory touch allowing for microgenerators. The retail side is more of a problem. You can't really expose retail customers to the spot price (that went wrong in Texas), so there has to be an intermediary, who is vulnerable to bankruptcy instead if the spot price shoots up.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#265

Post by pjc50 » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:33 PM UTC

BongoMcCat wrote: post #154

thecopy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never understand the economics argument. Either climate change and global warming are serious issues, and then slightly more expensive electricity should not matter - or they are not serious issues and we can keep burning coal and oil.

I think that the economic argument is that it isn't viable for a private company to start a nuclear power-plant, it would require government involvement, and lots of people don't want the government to get involved in something that they think no-government entities can handle.

Is EDF a "private" or "government" entity?

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#266

Post by ncmncm » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #160

ncmncm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar does not, in fact, require rare earths. (And, incidentally, "rare earths" are very, very far from rare; that is just a name.) And, the cost to clean them once in a while is very low. You are reaching. The fact is that renewables are the cheapest source of power that has ever happened on this planet, and they are still getting cheaper. Storage is likewise cheap and very quickly getting much, much cheaper. By the…

You need rare earths for wind power. They broadly come from hellscapes in the far reaches of Mongolia. [1] The reason they're primarily mined in China isn't, as you point out, their not existing anywhere else - it is due to the Chinese being willing to pay the extreme environmental cost of their refining. The second-most common type of panel, CdTe solar panels still contain cadmium, tellurium and sometimes lead - and…

Rare-earth magnets are often used in wind turbines, but very far from always.

CdTe PV is made on glass. They are common mainly in the US, mainly because of import tariffs. But Cd and Te are valuable and easily extracted from panels, so, no, they will not end up in landfills. The Si ones may, but very highly-purified Si is also valuable. Thin-film cells likely to be used in future cells use very little material.

So, you are reaching.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#267

Post by wasmitnetzen » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

shawnz wrote: post #254

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that Australia wouldn't have egregious chains of human failure or bad planning? Pretty much every country with civilian nuclear energy had some big scandals or incidents around them[1]. Humans just can't be trusted to build a 100% safe process. [1] Just to name a few: Three Mile Island (US), Sellafield (UK), Brunsbüttel (DE), Saint-Laurent (FR)

Isn't human failure and bad planning an even bigger concern for the handling of the 1000000x larger amount of coal that nuclear could replace?

No, not really. If a coal plant is designed or run badly, it might burn down, and that's it. If a nuclear plant is designed or run badly, whole countries might be unlivable for centuries. The risks are not the same.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#268

Post by ncmncm » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

jamincan wrote: post #209

ncmncm wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nukes can never turn out to be cheap power. It is always, always, always heavily subsidized by taxation, thus sometimes masking true cost. It is fortunate that extracting tar sands produces very expensive oil. As demand for oil drops, cost for oil from tar sands will be unable to match prices offered.

Nuclear technology has never really matured to be industry-led, and is quite obviously heavily subsidized now; surely it's not inevitably always going to be that way though. At one time, the wisdom re: solar power was that PVs were simply far too expensive to be used for large-scale power, and yet, here we are now.

Nothing about nukes can be expected to get cheaper, unlike solar and wind. Nukes are just inherently expensive, from refining fuel through massive construction, disaster insurance (always and everywhere subsidized), maintenance, to decommissioning.

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#269

Post by mrep » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

modo_mario wrote: post #246

flgb wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reasons why Australia doesn't and won't have nuclear: 1. Nuclear is a more expensive sources of energy than our alternatives (uranium ore is a small proportion of the cost stack, and Australia would still need to import nuclear fuel) 2. Nuclear isn't commercially viable in energy markets with very high levels of variable renewable energy where they have to be economically curtailed on an almost daily basis (our coal…

> Nuclear is a more expensive sources of energy than our alternatives Not in the very long term. Upfront it's really expensive yeah. >(uranium ore is a small proportion of the cost stack, and Australia would still need to import nuclear fuel) A very small portion and isn't Australia a big exporter? Might as well set up refinement capabilities. >with very high levels of variable renewable energy where they have to be…

You can make gas with electricity [0], it does not have to come from the ground. Here in the states nuclear is now about 3x as expensive as wind/solar [1]!

And to make matters even worse, you generally want to run nuclear at 100% all the time because of the high initial costs but summer peaks can be twice winter lows which means you would need to have a ton capacity that hardly ever gets used whereas gas is by far the cheapest option for handling variable demand.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source#...

Re: A first for Canada: New type of nuclear plant opening by 2028

#270

Post by dale_glass » Tue, May 03, 2022, 1:44 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #263

dale_glass wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but why would you set up the market backwards? The whole idea of base load was that nuclear is very cheap, but inflexible. So you optimize, generating as much as possible with nuclear, then filling in the variable bits with more expensive to run, but more flexible generation. Cheap renewables have completely wrecked that model though.

You set up the market to get the lowest possible total energy cost. If the lowest system design is to have nuclear as part of the mix instead of massive amounts of storage, then there's nothing backwards about setting up the market to support that. Right now we have a market where wind/solar don't have to pay for the externalities imposed by their intermittency. That is backwards.

Well, if you're going to account for all externalities, that sounds like a good idea, but I don't think nuclear would fare well under such a model.

Fukushima cost around $200 billion to clean up. I don't think that got factored into the cost of the power it sold.

Now I guess the answer here is insurance, but any insurance company that signs up for a potential payout of $200 billion is going to charge quite the premium, which won't make the already expensive nuclear power any more attractive.

And how do you even calculate the premium here? It's not a house or a vehicle with an easy to determine cost. We're talking about evacuating an area of unknown size for however long might be necessary.